Is It Hard To Get An OTR Job?

Being a driver financially is not going to be gainful. Inflation from the 80's to 2000 made sure that 25000 gross was the same as 65 gross 20 years later. And now I don't think 100,000 is enough. I am not in a position with income to generate the necessary savings with the ability to overcome problems of any kind like I was back in my day.

Driving for income means to minmize your expenses. And avoiding grocery warehouses. They abuse drivers by making you lose so much time waiting and you wonder why you now have to drive 1000 miles overnight which isnt going to happen (Original plan after loading this morning, but destroyed by excessive time lost at the dock waiting) You would need a new appt.

There are posts coming to TTR about detention time, one of which is a particularly short and important post about identifying the kind of situation you are heading into.

For me personally I ditched the grocery and took that reefer into McKesson for medicines of all kinds. Boom, 1 million plus loads are going to Detriot from Memphis and reload with cardboard bales back to memphis. No sitting. It's best done as team. toledo is a good town, if I don't watch it I might end up there among the germans... but when you find the proper trucking that makes you ENJOY your life (Work) then you are one of the few lucky ones.

There are flatbed people who run 25 million dollar airline Jet engines. If you got involved doing that, you are not going to be abused... much. No offense to the basic door slammer but different kinds of trucking in different situations will generate either a constant profit to you. Or a constant loss and a source of regret. It's not for everyone.

I know nothing about options. But I that if YOU have money the Bank smiles at you when you visit. When YOU ARE POOR, YOU smile at the bank when you visit. Savvy?

 

While I don’t necessarily agree that being a driver isn’t fruitful, you need to know going in that there are some driving jobs that aren’t fruitful.

I gave up hauling produce and vowed to only haul products that people actually want. Too many Walmarts and grocery warehouses that leave you stranded for dozens of hours, using your trailer as cold storage for product they seemingly don’t want or need. They will turn you away for seemingly insignificant “infractions” of their policies (like showing up 30 mins early, then later reject your load for being 10 mins late).

The produce we hauled was often loaded to max weight, meaning we were running 1/2 tanks of fuel to stay legal. We had to fly by night (fine by me) because we lost from 6am-6pm sitting on the farm being hand bombed with pumpkins, or whatever. We often had 4-5 stops and each one helped themselves to 2-3 hours to load a few pallets because the pallets weren’t built when we arrived. Often the watermelons were still sitting in the fields when we arrived, and it was all done on our dime.

I still run reefer, but now I haul industrial products to plants that actually want and need the product. It’s 90% drop and hook, but even live loads take 30 mins max and I’m on my way to the next one.

 

I should add that dry vans aren’t always much better. Before my current job, we had a few really excellent customers and a few not so excellent customers.

The not so excellent customers would order a truck for product they didn’t have. So we’d start our day at 7am emptying out, head to their facility 20 mins away and rot on the dock there until 5pm, only to find out the other driver with my product wasn’t going to make it.

This is the kind of stuff you have to do a job to find out about. On its face, it seemed like a great gig until I actually ran it and realized it was next to impossible to make the miles I expected due to poor planning, facilities that close at 5pm, don’t work weekends, etc. To top it off, the only place that was close to park overnight was a Walmart and right before I quit, they started putting up “No overnight parking for trucks” signs.

 

I guess you just need to plan better... That seems to be the mantra here, at least with some folks.

 

2Girls_1Truck,

Thanks for the many insights! Your really well versed from the little I have seen in this wide wide trucking World it seems! There is just so much to it, I can only imagine that there is much much more I will learn by initially reading and then actually partaking in as the days go on... This is a journey and it will never come to an end it seems, so I guess I better just buckle my seat belt and enjoy the ride


Regards,


Gregory

 

Look into obtaining a brokers license, I would not mess with driving if you plan on getting this thing off the ground. Just my .02

 

I see that my idea only works in one elemental variable.... IF I am hauling my own product and want to see to it's quality, etc.... OTherwise it just doesn't make sense to haul produce. We want to add a trucking element to the business, so knowing a little bit about trucking is important, but if you read further back in this thread there is a small chance that if our contracts are not signed we might scrap the whole business and I am still left with a CDL that I can use for other work, follow me?!? This is the game plan.... To either use it for our own business and learn more and grow upon it or use the CDL to make a living and now I am learning that hauling produce doesn't make sense! What loads are coming out of the Northeast - NY, CT area that do make sense? Do you know of any?

 

I need a career option path that is not limited by one avenue... Again, we are not 100% that this produce line of business will flow through this other avenue and if not I would like to drive! SO i am trying to learn what is the best types of load to drive out of the Northeast NY - CT area where ever in the United States?

 

Freight out of that area is crap as far as rates go, $1 a mile stuff unless you are connected. That is why I said go the broker route if you guys are getting in to produce and have a distribution point in CT. Do you have a cold storage with docks? Or is that up in the air too?

 

Let's say I don't want to do produce Justrucking2? Another type of load... CAn you tell me what other types of loads out of this area are good to haul that pay well?